


small clouds

by mnemememory



Series: burn your bodies [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials Fusion, Gen, Sort Of, actually wtf is this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 14:49:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14875812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mnemememory/pseuds/mnemememory
Summary: Frumpkin is Caleb's dæmon. Obviously.





	small clouds

It starts with something small. A slow, creeping ache that worms it way into the back of his skull, blood drowning his lungs. There are so many things that could have set it off, but it’s this: a moonless sky, and the world sings of rain.

Yasha is outside, head tilted towards the sky, bruised clouds obscuring the clouds. Caleb leans back in the cart and tries to see more than three feet in front of his face; it’s a loosing battle, but he’d volunteered for first watch, and took the job seriously. He blinked heavy water out of his eyes and pulled his makeshift hood up further, so that it obscured his face and made breathing a little easier.

Around them is an endless expanse of grey-green grass, ankle-high and as abrasive as broken glass. It’s taken them two weeks to make it out here, and they’ve learned by now to wrap their legs in extra linens to keep from drawing blood. There were things that swam deep in the earth, and none of them wanted to chance an encounter after the first. Every morning, Jester wakes up with more lines around her ankles than Molly has lines across his chest.

Thunder rumbles. A flash of lightning bursts to life in the near distance, silhouetting the clouds in silver light before fading once again to darkness. Even with Caleb’s less than perfect vision, he can see the dips and arcs it makes behind the smoke before dropping off.

They are camping underneath him, the Mighty Nein. Nott is curled up next to Jester, who is curled up next to Beau, who is the very picture of stoic manliness as she refuses to cuddle up to Fjord. Molly has no such compunctions, and is squeezing himself into as much of Fjord’s personal space as possible, much to sleep-Fjord’s obvious annoyance.

They look so small, this way.

Camping on the hills has been made impossible due to rough terrain, and they’d been forced to take shelter on the narrow road that winds across the tops of the hills.

Yasha has been standing there a long time.

Caleb lifts his head to do a full turn, anxiety prickling his gut. There’s something he’s missing, something he can’t quite make out –

“Yasha,” he says, but she doesn’t appear to hear him over the roar of the rain. “ _Yasha_ ,” Caleb yells, firmer, and she turns slowly to stare at him.

Her lips move, posture soft and questioning as she takes a few steps towards him. It’s too loud. Everything is too loud. Caleb can feel his shivering vibrate all the way down through the cart. Absurdly, he thinks: _if this keeps up, I’ll wake them up_. Which is impossible. If they’ve managed to sleep though this din, there’s very little that’s going to wake them up _now_.

Yasha is closer, now. “What?” she says, barely audible underneath the weight of it all.

Caleb shakes his head, and then shakes the rest of his body. He can’t stop. With a trembling finger, he points up at the hill behind them, a magnetic tug that jerks from the center of his gut. There’s something hollow in his bones. If he tried to step off a tall building, at this moment, he would be weightless.

Yasha shields her eyes of the rain and stares at the distance. Caleb follows his own pointed finger, but there’s nothing. There’s less than nothing. A smudge, something dark. Everything is dark, here, with the rain beating hammer-like to the ground. As the glass-grass bends, slick and humble, there is a single abnormality. Lightning splits across the sky, the grass sparking with a thousand fractals, and it’s gone. Caleb is imagining it.

Yasha says, “I don’t see anything,” in her slow, deliberate voice, but Caleb doesn’t really hear her.

It starts with something small.

…

…

_(_

_“You look wrong.”_

_“I look fine, Caleb. You’re the one who’s wrong this time.”_

_“No, no, don’t be stupid. We’re not stupid. You’re smarter than this, anyway. They’re never going to accept us like this.”_

_“Of course they are. We’re too good not to be accepted.”_

_“They’re looking for –”_

_“I know what they’re looking for, and I’m saying it doesn’t matter. We’ll just blow the others out of the water.”_

_“It doesn’t work like that.”_

_“And what you’re_ asking _me to do doesn’t work like you think it does! You should know better, Caleb.”_

_“Just change. Please. Anything but this.”_

_“I rather like this form, though.”_

_“It doesn’t matter what we like. We_ need _to get there. We’ve been training our whole lives for this.”_

_“I’m not going to mess it up for us. Relax, Caleb. It’s like you have no faith in me.”_

_“I have quite a lot of faith in you. But this isn’t a matter of faith. Please.”_

_“I’d rather not. Look at my lovely feathers.”_

_“_ Please _.”_

_“…oh, well. I mean. I suppose I could try.”_

_)_

…

…

Something a little bigger, this time.

Caleb isn’t even on watch, jammed up in the roots of a large tree and trying to sleep past the sun burning a hole in the sky. He’s too warm, with Nott at his side and his cloak a humid weight on his back. It is late in the afternoon, but not late enough – travelling by night is taxing in a way Caleb has never experienced. With Nott, they had always been too small a target to worry about, unless pickings had been especially slim. They tried to avoid those kinds of areas, in any case, so highway robbery had just been a waste of time. A haggard, homeless man and his daughter? Not worth the effort of an ambush. For the most part, of course.

With the Nein, however – well. The Nein are a far more tempting target. Their cart can’t go too fast, and it’s often accompanied by a loud cacophony of curses that split through the air, loud enough to wake the dead. Mostly from Beau. Three nights in, and Caleb is ready to give these people up for dead and go back to a life of crime. Well, less institutionalised crime.

Irritated, Caleb looks into the trees. Beau is on last watch, alone with Fjord, who is circling around the side to try and get away from the oppressive vacuum of heat that has cloyed its way into the clearing. She’s sitting on one of the far branches, arm looping around the trunk as she leans over to survey the surrounding area. Thace is set at the foot of that particular tree, thick coat gleaming with sweat.

Sleep is a thick weight on Caleb’s skull, hair pulled taunt and greasy. They haven’t had a proper bath in weeks – none of them, at all, and it really shows. Caleb is used to living without the comfort of cleanliness, but he must admit, travelling with a pile of stinking bodies was never high on his list of “fun things to do when he grew up”. Sonia had always –

Caleb shuts his eyes and counts. _One. Two. Three._ There’s a pile of coins in front of him, and he’s counting it all. _Four_. _Five. Six. Seven._

He knows better. Caleb knows better than to try and dredge up old memories. Even now, he can feel his muscles burning with fatigued memory, can see Sonia laughing at him in his mind’s eye. _We have to catch up_! she says. _We can’t let Astrid win!_

_Eight. Nine. Nine. Nine._

Caleb is just about to give up when something lazily movies to his peripheral. His glazed, half-closed eyes snap open, and he’s on his feet and pulled forward before he even recognises what’s happening.

Thace snaps to attention, on his feet and prowling towards the source of the. The thing. The shadow. It’s something – it’s _something_ , Caleb can’t quite get his eyes around it. Something big. As big as Thace. Bigger. He can’t quite make out the details, his mind just fuzzes over the corners. Before he’s even aware of it, Caleb is running.

“Caleb!” Nott cries from behind him. Beau drops down from the trees. Yasha is close, so close, close enough to – she’s got her sword out –

Caleb stares into eyes of green ice. Matted fur hangs around the creature in long, thick clumps, dried blood and other…things…sticking out from its sides. _Oh,_ Caleb thinks. _Oh, oh, oh_.

Fire burns at his fingertips, and he brings his arms up. Terror spikes cold in his gut, and he’s reacting without thinking. He can’t think, because if he thinks right now, he’s going to go insane.

Yasha is on the ground, the thing’s teeth at her throat. Frumpkin, who had been curled up beside the woman all day, is clawing and hissing and trying to distract the thing, but it’s relentless. Caleb feels dim affinity with the one-track, bloodthirsty rage, before he lets loose a fireball.

The creature throws up its head and screams.

Caleb drops to the ground, shivering. He can’t stop shivering. He tries to speak, tries to say something, _anything_ , but everything’s moving in fast-forward and slow-motion at the same time. Nott is at his side. Nott is saying something. He should listen to that. It’s still there. The creature. Caleb should try and –

Caleb closes his eyes.

…

…

One day, Caleb wakes up with a hole in his head and a hole in his heart.

“My boy,” Trent Ikithon says, bending down to stare at Caleb’s prone form on the table. “I’m so _proud_ of you.”

…

…

“Here, hold Frumpkin for me,” Caleb says, and pushes him into Yasha’s hands.

He drops to the ground, fishing through the knee-high mud in annoyance. There’s only so much coin he has on his person, and that stupid monster had made him drop it. He combs his fingers in a grid pattern, grinning with every piece of metal he snags.

Everyone is covered in various fluids of thankfully unknown nature, for the most part. There’s enough shit on Nott to fertilize a field of corn, and Jester’s dress has certainly seen better days. The only one to come out of this little adventure with any semblance of decency is Fjord, who somehow had gotten out of the splash-zone before things had. Well. Gone down the drain, so to speak.

“Caleb,” Yasha says.

“One moment, please,” Caleb says, stacking his coins on the ground next to him. _One, two, three –_

“ _Caleb_ ,” Yasha says, a little more urgently.

“What is the matter?” Caleb says, not looking up from his task. He’d lost seven pieces. There were five here. He slowly begins to dig around, this time with more purpose. They had all fallen within the same general vicinity, so that meant –

“I don’t think I’m allowed to touch him,” Yasha says. There’s something strange about her voice that makes Caleb look up properly this time. Yasha is standing rigid, Frumpkin balancing on her arms like two bands of straight iron.

Caleb frowns at her, pocketing his five gold without bothering to thumb off the dirt. “Touch what? Frumpkin? He doesn’t mind.”

Frumpkin yawns, teeth flashing at Yasha’s throat.

“Isn’t he…” Yasha says. “You know…”

“I know what?” Caleb says, standing up. “If you’re not a cat person, you can just say so –”

“No, no, I like cats just fine,” Yasha says. “I’ve never met one before Frumpkin, but I just assumed…”

Caleb gives her an unimpressed look.

Yasha ducks her head a little. “Caleb, isn’t he your dæmon ?”

Oh.

There are only two humans in their merry little band of misfits, and Beau had made no secret about keeping Thace out in the open. There wasn’t much of an option about it, really, because Thace was a waist-high silver-black wolf, so concealment was of her dæmon  was a little troublesome. None of the others had dæmons – Nott would sometimes wax poetic about one, or Jester would try to pet Thace and get a very irate Beau telling her _No, that’s not polite, you can’t just –_

Caleb is human. Caleb is very, very human.

“No, Yasha,” he finally says. He snaps his fingers, and Frumpkin is out of Yasha’s awkward arms and curled around Caleb’s shoulders. Yasha doesn’t shrink back, but it’s a close thing. “He is not my dæmon.”

“I’m sorry,” Yasha says. “I didn’t mean. I know that’s a very personal question, and I didn’t. I shouldn’t have.”

“Frumpkin is my familiar,” Caleb says, slow and gentle. “See?”

Caleb snaps his fingers again, and Frumpkin is on Yasha’s right shoulders, balancing easily on the broad space. Yasha glances up into Frumpkin’s eyes, and tentatively reaches out and presses her fingers to his head. Frumpkin once again begins to purr.

“Dæmons cannot do that,” Caleb says. “Surely you know that.”

Yasha starts to shrug, and then seems to think better of it. She makes a vague gesture with her hand instead. “You’re a wizard,” she says, like that explains everything. Caleb tries to smile, but something sticks in his throat, and he can’t make himself do it. The rest of the Nein are arguing in the background about whether or not to go back down and get the rest of the treasure. It’s a split decision between getting filthier than any of them had thought possible, or going and renting a bath. At this point, even Caleb is getting tired of the dirt.

“I do not have a dæmon,” Caleb says, and he does not choke on it.

“At all?” Yasha says. She is still gently petting Frumpkin.”

“No,” Caleb says. “Please do not ask about this again.”

…

…

Caleb doesn’t wake up.

He can hear them, though.

“It will be fine, Nott,” Jester is saying. “You’ll see. We just need to get Caleb to a doctor.”

“Try healing him again.”

Something warm and soft brushes up against Caleb’s skin, but he can’t force his eyes open. He doesn’t want to force his eyes open. Everything hurts.

...

...

**Author's Note:**

> Beau's dæmon was GONNA be a ferret, but then I watched WonderCon Talks Machina live thing and that was a very convenient excuse to make this vaguely canon adjacent, so. 
> 
> (Is this my best work? absolutely not. I'm going to come back and edit this, buuuuut deadlines are closing in, and if I don't post this now, it's not going up for three weeks). 
> 
> Next week I'm updating "running with knives", I promise!!


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